Darkblood Prison - G.K. DeRosa

Chapter One

Darkness coiled around my insides, weaving its way through each murky nook until it consumed every inch of me. The inky haze muddled my thoughts as I tried to search my mind for what happened in the past few hours. Nothing but a thick layer of sludge blanketed my memories.

I whipped my head from side to side, wild dark hair lashing across my face as I attempted to chase the cobwebs out. I lifted my hand to rub my eyes, and my wrists stung as metal cuffs dug into my flesh and sharpened my dull thoughts. Oh, right. I side-eyed the bulky uniformed guard to my right and his twin to my left. I stopped trying to get information out of them once we landed in Draeko, dragon territory. They were either mute or really good at ignoring me.

I glanced up at the ominous obsidian fortress perched atop the steep snow-covered crag, and a chill skirted up my spine. I was fairly certain it wasn’t from the frigid temps either. How the hell did I end up here?

My arms ached from being dragged by my dragon escorts up the endless rocky steps carved into the side of the mountain. I kicked and screamed but my captors’ hold only tightened the more I struggled. Their partially shifted talons dug into my skin the more I squirmed. Son of a witch!

These were definitely not run-of-the-mill human handcuffs. I could feel their magic leeching the power right out of me. No super strength or speed remained. On the bright side, I had zero urge to suck out their supernatural souls so that was a plus. Or maybe not, in this case.

I glanced over my shoulder at the thousands of steps below us and the sleek obsidian plates that lined the face of the mountain. There was no climbing those bad boys. The stone staircase was the only way off this towering peak. Why didn’t these bastards fly me up the whole way? Was this just the first form of torture I’d encounter?

We finally reached the top step, and I sucked in a sharp breath. My heart slammed against my ribs as I attempted to force oxygen into my lungs at this ridiculously high altitude.

“No dawdling. Keep moving, girl,” the meathead to my left muttered.

“Ah, he speaks!”

His reptilian eyes seared me with a narrowed glare before he jerked me forward. My eyes landed on the wrought iron gate and the chilling letters stamped across the top—Darkblood Prison.

I balked and staggered back, but two pairs of muscled arms stopped my backward trajectory. “Wait!” I squealed. “This has to be a mistake.”

Darkblood Prison was notorious in both the supernatural and human worlds. Only the worst and most powerful supe baddies ended up here. I may not have remembered what I’d done, but there was no way I deserved this. Right?

A pit the size of a boulder sank to the bottom of my stomach, and the darkness I’d felt earlier gripped my insides, long fingers curling around my heart and lungs, squeezing. What happened on my little jaunt into the Fae realm?

“There’s no mistake, demon.”

Panic surged through my veins, and my mind flickered back to my sixteenth birthday when my demon powers first emerged. Oh gods, no. Not again. It couldn’t be. “Come on, just tell me what I did. Please.”

The big guard grunted as he jabbed his finger at a biometric scanner at the gate. “Memory loss,” he snarled, “that’s not going to save your soul-sucking hide.” A robotic voice spat out the man’s name and approval code, but my brain was too jumbled to pick out the details. He and the other dragon hauled me through the entrance gate without further explanation as my brain repeated his words on a never-ending loop. Soul-sucking. Soul-sucking.

Shitzu.

We reached a massive metal door, and the guard pressed his thumb to the scanner once more. With a sharp keening sound, it grinded open, both sides of steel sliding into the rock wall. A wave of musty air rolled over me and tickled my nose. I reached for my face and cursed the cuffs once again when they dug into my flesh.

Guard number one jerked me forward, and the suffocating earthy smell closed in around us. They tugged me down the narrow tunnel, the flickering flames from the torches dancing across the obsidian rock walls.

My feet dragged over the dirt floor, each step harder than the last. My muscles felt like jelly after the never-ending climb and now this. A warm,